Apnea of prematurity, triggered by a sudden, total shock to a nervous system that had finally, barely, found its balance and just had it torn away.

“Code blue, bed seven!” Evans shouted, and turned to rush her the few feet to the isolette. Sarge stood up.

I will not forget it. Nine hours cramped in a hard chair, his body wrecked with fatigue, and he came up out of it in one smooth motion, fast and fluid, towering over both of them.

He reached out and took her back from Evans’s hands with a gentleness that was agonizing to watch given the speed of it, folded her against his chest, and dropped straight back into the four-second breathing without a word of instruction to himself.

“Oxygen. Now.” He barked it at me, and it was not a request, it was a command from someone who had run worse emergencies than this one. “Nasal cannula. Move.”

My training took over before my thinking did.